Keeping an eye on Communist, Totalitarian China, and its influence both globally, and we as Canadians. I have come to the opinion that we are rarely privy to truth regarding the real goal, the agenda of Red China, and it's implications for Canada [and North America as a whole]. No more can we rely on our media as more and more information on China is actively being swept under the carpet - not for consumption.

One
of the miners alleges a union's actions are creating contempt for Chinese
people.(CBC)
A Chinese miner employed to work in a controversial northern British Columbia
coal mine has launched a human rights complaint against the United Steelworkers
Union.

Huizhi Li, who works at HD Mining's Murray River project in northern B.C.,
has sent a letter to the Canadian Human Rights Commission that says leaflets and
the content on union's website are likely to create contempt for Chinese
people.Li's letter to the commission says information posted to the union's website
alleges Chinese miners will work for reduced wages and in substandard
conditions, which denies Canadians opportunity to those jobs.

U.S. drops China's Taobao website from "notorious" list

By Doug PalmerWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States
on Thursday dropped a website owned by China's largest e-commerce company,
Alibaba Group, from its annual list of the world's most "notorious markets" for
sales of pirated and counterfeit goods.
Taobao Marketplace, an online shopping site similar to eBay and Amazon that
brings together buyers and sellers, "has been removed from the 2012 List because
it has undertaken notable efforts over the past year to work with rightholders
directly or through their industry associations to clean up its site," the U.S.
Trade Representative's office said in the report.
The move came just before an annual high-level U.S.-China trade meeting next
week in Washington.
Taobao Marketplace is China's largest consumer-oriented e-commerce platform,
with estimated market share of more than 70 percent. The website has nearly 500
million registered users, with more than 800 million product listings at any
given time. Most of the users are in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and
Macao.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called Taobao "one of the single largest
online sources of counterfeits."
The Chinese Commerce Ministry strongly objected to Taobao's inclusion on the
USTR's 2011 notorious markets list. A ministry spokesman said it did not appear
to be based on any "conclusive evidence or detailed analysis.
Alibaba hired former USTR General Counsel James Mendenhall to help persuade
USTR to remove Taobao from its list.
The Chinese company's bid to shed its "notorious" label won support from the
Motion Picture Association of America, a former critic of Taobao, which praised
its effort to reduce the availability of counterfeit goods on its
website.
But U.S. software, clothing and shoe manufacturers urged USTR to keep Taobao
on the list.
To stay off in the future, USTR urged "Taobao to further streamline
procedures ... for taking down listings of counterfeit and pirated goods and to
continue its efforts to work with and achieve a satisfactory outcome with U.S.
rights holders and industry associations."
USTR said it also removed Chinese website Sogou from the notorious markets
list, based on reports that it has made "notable efforts to work with rights
holders to address the availability of infringing content on its site."
U.S. concerns about widespread piracy and counterfeiting of American goods in
China are expected to be high on the agenda at next week's meeting in Washington
of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade.
The 2012 notorious markets list includes Xunlei, which USTR described as a
Chinese-based site that facilitates the downloading and distribution of pirated
movies.
Baixe de Tudo, a website hosted in Sweden but targeted at the Brazilian
market, was also put on the list along with the Chinese website Gougou.
Warez-bb, which USTR described as a hub for pre-release music, software and
video games, was also included. The forum site is registered in Sweden but
hosted by a Russian Internet service provider, USTR said.
The full report can be found on USTR's website at: here%20Notorious%20Markets%20List.pdf
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Will Dunham, Dan Grebler and Jim
Marshall)

Mining firm says in court documents it advertised for Canadian workers

Photo 2/2

Union workers in B.C. have raised the alarm over a Chinese coal company's plan to bring foreign miners to work in Canada.

By James Keller, The Canadian Press December 13, 2012

It
could be more than four years before any Canadian miners are hired at a
controversial underground coal project in northern British Columbia and
more than 14 years before all the temporary foreign workers are gone,
says a transition plan prepared by the company behind the mining
proposal.HD Mining submitted the document to the federal
government earlier this year as it applied for temporary foreign worker
permits to bring 201 Chinese miners to its proposed Murray River coal
mine near Tumbler Ridge.

The plan was released Wednesday as a
pair of unions challenging those permits asked a Federal Court to stop
any more workers from arriving.
The Chinese-owned company has
said it must hire foreign workers because there are no Canadians
trained in the specialized form of mining that would be used at Murray
River, and it has stressed the Chinese miners’ jobs are temporary.

The
document indicates the company plans to use temporary foreign workers
to build the mine, which it expects would take 30 months to complete.
If the mine is approved, temporary foreign workers would be used at the
mine for the first two years of operation as they set up a training
school and start recruiting and training Canadians.

After that,
the document says it would take another decade to shift the work to
Canadians at a rate of 10 per cent of the mine’s workforce per year.The
B.C. Federation of Labour, which isn’t directly involved in the case
but has been a vocal critic of the mine, seized on the document to
suggest the public has been misled about the temporary nature of the
Chinese miners’ work.
“They’re talking 14-and-a-half years — that would be unacceptable to anybody in Canada,” Sinclair said in an interview.
“This is a total abuse of the program. There’s nothing temporary about any of these jobs.”

The
proposed Murray River mine has been the source of controversy since
details of the foreign worker permits surfaced in news reports two
months ago. The federal human resources minister has said her ministry
has its own concerns about whether the rules were followed and
announced last month that the entire temporary foreign worker program
is now under review.

HD Mining has proposed a $300-million
underground mine southwest of Tumbler Ridge, about 140 kilometres west
of Grande Prairie, Alta. The court heard that 17 Chinese miners are
already in B.C. and another 60 are expected to arrive this weekend as
the company prepares for preliminary exploration work while waiting for
full approval for the mine.

HD Mining has already said it would
take 10 years to transition work to Canadians, but it has not said it
would be more than four years before the transition would begin.
Spokeswoman
Jody Shimkus said HD Mining wants to hire Canadians as soon as it can,
but she insisted it will take time to transfer the skills needed to
work in the mine, especially given the current labour shortage facing
the industry.
“If we’re successful transferring the skill set before then, that would be wonderful,” Shimkus said in an interview.

“But
when we submitted the plan, we also submitted the information on the
overall shortage of skilled workers both in B.C. and Canada, so we will
be competing with all other sectors and natural resource operations for
that pool of workers.”
Shimkus noted the company recently signed an agreement with Northern Lights College to create a curriculum to train workers.

B.C.
Jobs Minister Pat Bell has been one of the mine’s most vocal
supporters, repeatedly defending the company’s plan to use temporary
foreign workers and suggesting the temporary jobs are linked to
exploration work that will last six to eight months.
Bell did not
make himself available for an interview Wednesday, instead issuing a
written statement that ignored a question about the length of HD
Mining’s planned transition to Canadian workers.

Bell’s statement
said the latest court documents released in Federal Court show HD
Mining made extensive efforts to meet provincial workplace safety
rules.
The transition plan outlines the steps the company has
put in place to ensure the mine meets provincial rules, including
asking B.C.’s inspector of mines to review the issue of the use of
Mandarin at the mine.

The Federal Court case linked to the mine
was launched by the International Union of Operating Engineers and the
Construction and Specialized Workers Union, which are seeking to have
the company’s temporary foreign worker permits thrown out.

The
two unions were in court Wednesday asking for an injunction to prevent
more workers from arriving — including the 60 expected to arrive this
weekend — until the legal challenge can be heard.

Harper Conservatives aren’t serving national interest

The
Harper government has not explained how allowing the sell-off of
Canada’s most promising companies to the highest foreign bidder will
help Canada to grow its own competitive corporations, or get it to the
comfortable economic haven Norway finds itself in.

Through smart government choices Norway’s Heritage Fund now delivers more wealth to the nation than its oil industry.
We need to do something much smarter than cash in our chips when we think we are ahead.

Gone are the Incos and Falconbridges, gone is Alcan along with its water rights in perpetuity.

Selling off the best is like high grading a forest; you are left with the genetic junk and a degenerate forest.
Why would Canada’s best business minds stick around in this degraded corporate environment?

With
the defanging of many environmental regulations, the
behind-closed-doors negotiation of the China trade deal, the lack of
white papers and parliamentary discussion to thrash out complex issues,
one gets the disturbing sense that it is not Canada’s interests that
are the overriding concern of the Harper government, but multinational
corporate interests.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Canadian newspaper Ottawa Citizen reports today that Chinese investors are buying Canadian farmland, raising many concerns throughout the country.

The
issue is Chinese' growing middle class. Hundreds of millions of people
in China modified their eating habits and are consuming vastly larger
quantities of meat and higher protein foods. There isn't simply enough
arable land in China to meet this new demand. hence, the Chinese
interest in fertilizers and agricultural lands (not to mention base
metals and other materials).

In Canada, Quebec's agricultural
producers union is making noise expressing concern that by Chinese
buying large tracts of agricultural land in the province constitute a
food security issue and that it may be related to a new international
property speculation in agricultural land.

Both would drive up Quebec farm prices.

The
report states that Canadian western farmers are also unreceptive to the
Chinese interest in their lands, citing a firm called Monaxxion, which is looking to buy 40,000 hectares of land in Canada

Farmers are leery of Monaxxion.

"Sherbrooke's La Tribune newspaper reported Friday that a farmer in St. Clotildede Horton recently backed out of a tentative $30-million deal with Monaxxion after concluding the firm and its clients weren't as solid as he had been led to believe".

Te
article mentions that fears are growing about the Chinese motives as
"China has been investing heavily in agricultural land in Africa and
other Third World nations. China has 20% of the world's population and
an increasingly wealthy middle class"

"China has been actively
seeking new supplies of food, hydrocarbons and other commodities on
international markets.The country has been trying to buy into Canada's oil sands
developments. It has reconfigured its foreign-aid programs to
concentrate on helping countries such as Zambia that have rich copper
deposits. And it has worked diligently to develop closer relationships
with oil-rich countries such as Iran".

Daniel MercierGouin, a professor of agricultural economics with the Université Laval says there is no longer any doubt that the world is seeing the beginning of a speculative boom in agricultural land.

"To date, there have been plenty of inquires and even purchase offers by Monaxxion, but nothing really solid in terms of sales.However, Bergeron of Monaxxion
says there are some important transactions being negotiated right now.
And he said he plans to make his investors more open for public
scrutiny"

Related Stories

The US, Canada and UK have refused to
sign an international communications treaty at a conference in Dubai.

The three countries had objected to calls for all states to have equal rights
to the governance of the internet.Russia,Chinaand Saudi Arabia were among those pushing for the change.
It marks a setback for the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
which had said it was sure it could deliver consensus.
"It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must
communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form," said
Terry Kramer the US ambassador to the World Conference on International
Telecommunications (Wcit).
"The internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit
during these past 24 years."
Negotiators from Denmark, the Czech Republic, Sweden, the Netherlands, New
Zealand, Costa Rica and Kenya have said they would need to consult with their
national governments about how to proceed and would also not be able to sign the
treaty as planned on Friday.Censorship claims
The ITU had organised the 12-day conference in order to revise a
communications treaty last overhauled 24 years ago.

193 countries have been
debating changes to a communications treaty in Dubai

It said the document would help nations co-ordinate efforts against spam and
widen access to the web.
However, much of the discussions ended up focusing on whether or not
countries should have equal rights to the development of the internet's
technical foundations.
In particular many attendees believed it was an anachronism that the US
government got to decide which body should regulate the net's address system as
a legacy of its funding for Arpanet - a precursor to the internet which helped
form its technical core.
However, the US said this allowed it to ensure that technical experts could
make "agile, rapid-fire decisions" about the net's development as part of
multi-stakeholder organisations.
It added that other references to net might also be used to legitimise
censorship and other interference in the operation of internet service providers
(ISPs) and cloud-based operations, such as Google and Facebook.
Its view was supported by the internet and web pioneers Vint Cerf and Tim
Berners-Lee who warned any changes posed a "disruptive threat to the stability
of the system".Russian proposals
A proposal from Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Sudan calling for
equal rights for all governments to manage "internet numbering, naming,
addressing and identification resources" was eventually shelved

The US's Terry Kramer had
pushed for minimal mention of the internet in the agreement

But there was fresh controversy on Wednesday night after an alternative
non-binding resolution was debated which suggested the UN agency's leadership
should "continue to take the necessary steps for ITU to play an active and
constructive role in the development of broadband and the multi-stakeholder
model of the internet."
This was opposed by the US and European nations who repeated their argument
that the treaty's regulations should not stretch to internet governance.
As debate continued into the early hours of Thursday morning the conference's
chairman, Mohammed Nasser al-Ghanim asked for a "feel of the room" noting
afterwards that the resolution had majority support, while stressing that this
was not a formal "vote".
Matters were also complicated by an African bloc of countries calling for a
paragraph to be added to the treaty's preamble stating that: "These regulations
recognise the right of access of member states to international
telecommunication services."
The US and its allies suggested this as an attempt to extend the treaty's
regulations to cover internet governance and content.'Bad agreement'
After a break for sleep, Iran called for a vote on the African proposal which
was carried by 77 votes to 33. This was in spite of the ITU's earlier pledge
that disputed issues would only be resolved by consensus and not a majority
vote

Iran brought matters to a head
by calling for a vote on the treaty's preamble text

The organisation's secretary-general attempted to salvage discussions, but
the US, Canada and UK said they could no longer ratify the treaty.
"My delegation came to work for revised international telecommunication
regulations, but not at any cost," said the head of the UK delegation Simon
Towle.
"We prefer no resolution on the internet at all, and I'm extremely concerned
that the language just adopted opens the possibility of internet and content
issues."
Despite this setback, the ITU's secretary-general Dr Hamadoun Toure insisted
that those countries which did sign the treaty would benefit
from other achievements including " increased transparency in international
mobile roaming charges and competition".
He stressed that it was his belief that - despite what others had indicated -
the treaty did not cover content issues

Nelson Ching/Bloomberg Pedestrians walk past a PetroChina Co. Ltd. gas station in
Beijing, China. A subsidiary of state-owned PetroChina will invest $2.18 billion
for a 49.9 per cent interest in about 180,000 hectares Encana has in the
emerging Duvernay formation.

CALGARY — Less than a week after Ottawa waved through CNOOC Ltd.’s
$15.1-billion takeover of Nexen Inc., a different Chinese state-owned company is
plowing another $2.2-billion into the Canadian oilpatch.
Natural gas giant Encana Corp. and a subsidiary of PetroChina announced
Thursday they have reached a deal to work together in the Duvernay, a promising
shale natural gas formation in west-central Alberta.

Related

PetroChina will end up owning just shy of half of the 180,000 hectares Encana
has in the Duvernay, which means the deal won’t be subject to the same federal
review as the Nexen deal.
In announcing the Nexen decision — as well as a green light for Malaysian
state-owned firm Petronas’ takeover of natural gas producer Progress Energy
Resources Corp. — Prime Minister Stephen Harper stressed that those types of
deals would not be the norm
.

Click to
enlarge

“I think Prime Minister Harper was clear that Canadian was still welcoming
foreign investment,” said Geoff Hill, a partner at Deloitte’s Calgary
officer.
“Where he was also clear was that control and complete ownership, especially
by state-owned enterprises, would be much more difficult.”
Encana estimates there are nine billion oil-equivalent barrels initially in
place on its Duvernay lands, which are rich in valuable natural gas liquids. It
will remain operator of the project.

It is a strong endorsement of Encana’s position as a reliable long-term
partner

“Phoenix’s investment demonstrates the tremendous value that Encana has
created in this early-life, liquids-rich play and enables us to accelerate the
pace at which the full production potential of our Duvernay lands can be
achieved,” Encana CEO Randy Eresman said in a release.
“A transaction of this magnitude keeps us on track to create a more
diversified commodity portfolio and maintain our balance sheet strength. It is a
strong endorsement of Encana’s position as a reliable long-term partner.”

Ted Rhodes/Postmedia News
filesEncana president and CEO Randy
Eresma.

PetroChina has already paid $1.18-billion to Encana, with the remainder being
stretched over the next four years. The two companies plan to invest about
$4-billion in the project over that time.
“This joint venture will build a foundation for the successful development of
the Duvernay play and help to diversify our business portfolio,” said Pheonix
CEO Zhiming Li.
“Encana is our ideal long-term partner for the development of our future
natural gas business.”
Encana and PetroChina have a history: an earlier $5.4-billion joint-venture
deal for Encana’s lands in the Montney region fell apart in mid-2011 after they
failed to see eye-to-eye on how that project would operate.
Encana has been inking several joint venture deals in recent years so that it
can develop its huge resource base more quickly than would otherwise be the
case.
The cash injection from deep-pocketed partners has helped Encana cope with
persistently low natural gas prices.
Encana shares rose 2.3%, or 47 cents, to $20.91 in Thursday afternoon trading
on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Encana has drilled nine wells into its 445,000 acres (180,100 hectares) in
lands in the Duvernay, where numerous companies have amassed large land
positions through government land sales and takeovers.
In October, Exxon Mobil Corp. agreed to spend C$2.6 billion to take over
Celtic Exploration Ltd., which has extensive acreage in the region.
A study by the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board and Alberta
Geological Survey said the Duvernay formation, which extends through much of
central Alberta, contains 443 trillion cubic feet of total gas in place, 11.3
billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 61.7 billion barrels of oil, putting
it on par with some of the continent’s largest shale prospects.The Canadian Press, with files from Reuters

Up for negotiation at WCIT are the International Telecommunications
Regulations, or ITRs, which cover everything from improving internet access for
the elderly and disabled, to enabling access for the 4.6bn people in the world
with no access at all, improving cybersecurity and, most controversially,
discussing the "sender pays" economic model of delivering web content.

Amid all the hyperbole and
acres of coverage about the future of the free internet, the treaty is the
latest round of a long-fought
battle between the internet lobby and the telecommunications companies.

The west, including the corporate world and open internet advocates, claim
the "sender pays" model would benefit larger corporations, but penalise
individuals and less wealthy businesses who can't afford the bills.
On the other side of the argument, mobile operators represented at WCIT by
the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO) argue that
developing countries have to establish and fund broadband networks that then
enable western internet companies to reach new markets at no expense to
themselves - in effect free riding on the infrastructure which costs money to
install and run.
Attention has swirled around political tensions that will also be played out
at the WCIT, with Russia and China explicit in their desire to wrest control of
the internet away from the US, and other proposals to change regulation in a way
that critics say could infringe privacy and free speech. But developing
countries, who have struggled to gain a voice in this debate, feel the ITU is
one of very few organisations where their voices can be heard, and they too want
a say in the future of the internet.
Google, along with Cisco, Microsoft, Comcast and AT&T, has been part of a
well-funded campaign coordinated through lawyer, former US ambassador and former
US government IT policy co-ordinator David Gross. A powerful lobbying force,
Google has played a shrewd hand, using its policy specialists and tech-celebrity
executives.
Vint Cerf, one of the "fathers of the internet" who is now "chief internet
evangelist" at Google, has been campaigning against the ITU almost full-time for
months, offering a seemingly inarguable combination of the economically and
democratically essential open internet, and his winning putdowns.

A lengthy comment piece in
the New
York Times proclaimed: "The decisions taken in Dubai in December have the
potential to put government handcuffs on the Net." The
New York Post was rather less measured, quoting Cerf in a piece that began:
"If delegates have their way at next week's World Conference on International
Telecommunications in Dubai, the man in charge of the Web will be a
Soviet-trained apparatchik from Cold War days."

Even Cerf himself appeared
to lose his composure last week when he told Reuters:
"These persistent attempts are just evidence that this breed of dinosaurs, with
their pea-sized brains, hasn't figured out that they are dead yet, because the
signal hasn't travelled up their long necks."

Back at the ITU, the small staff team has seemed increasingly bewildered and
put on the back foot by the ferocious onslaught of press coverage against them.

The ITU responded to
criticism about its lack of openness by publishing WCIT material on its site,
including inviting public comments on
the changes to the ITRs; only 29 were received in three months. With no small
irony, ITU has even paid for Google ads next to searches for 'WCIT', hoping to
redress the information balance slightly. It also claims that journalists have
repeatedly published inaccurate statements about ITU without contacting it for
comment, and that publications have refused to publish corrections.

The ITU describes itself as an administrative body that does not make
regulations, but organises negotiation of the ITRs. Individual countries are
then obliged to legislate for after the process of negotiation and voting on
each of the proposed changes to regulations, which number around 1,000.
Speaking ahead of WCIT, ITU secretary general Dr Hamadoun Touré said: "It is
important to remember that when you talk of internet freedom, most people in the
world cannot even access the internet. The internet is the rich world's
privilege and ITU wants to change that.
"It is our global objective to assure that every citizen is connected no
matter what their circumstance, and we need to reach a consensus no matter what
the ideological view on member."

"We will challenge Google again to bring their points to the table," said
Toure. "In 1988 [the last WCIT] there was the same friction between East and
West, and they managed to get over it.
"We've had 147 years of brokering agreements between member states. We have
survived two world wars and 70 years of cold war, and if member states had not
come together and make agreements, there would be no satellites in orbit, no
spectrum allocated, no radio or television - and no internet."

ITU's secret weapon is
counsellor Richard
Hill, a former Orange and HP executive and statistician with an
encyclopaedic knowledge of the telecomms industry. "ETNO has made no bones about
what it is looking for - remuneration for the additional value they believe they
can provide," he said. "But from friction comes light, and we believe discussion
will be useful in formulating solutions that will be in the interests of all
parties, and will lead to further expansion of the internet."

These proponents [such as our 'buddy' Mr. Hill] will lie to you how it protects the individual and provides them ..thats you folks..[ahem, cough cough] security.

controversial international plan to control the Internet
has aroused the protests of the United States as certain Arab nations
have teamed up with Russia and China to attempt to place the World Wide
Web under the control of the International Telecommunications Union.
At the World Conference on International Telecommunications
currently meeting in Dubai Dec. 3-14, a group of Arab states along with
Russia and China proposed that nations strictly control Internet
companies, leading many critics, especially in the United States, to
charge that the proposal would severely hamper Internet freedom.
With the Internet currently under the control of the United States
through its corporations that first laid the groundwork and software
for the development of the World Wide Web, attempts to micromanage the
Internet and the companies that provide it have been resisted in the
name of the free flow of information.
As the Internet has spread, however, nations that do not value nor
want freedom of information have been attempting for at least a decade
to restrict the information that is made available on the Web and to
micromanage Internet companies so that strict limitations by various
governments can be placed on access to information.
China was perhaps the first nation to insist on such restrictions,
requiring that U.S. Internet companies that do business within the
country censor their search engines to prevent average citizens from
gaining access to information that their government considers to be off
limits.
Google, for example, was forced to make such restrictions as a
condition of doing business in China, but after a few years of
censorship the company decided that these restrictions were
unacceptable.
More recently other nations with totalitarian forms of government,
such as Russia and Muslim nations, have also insisted that strict
limits be placed on access to information on the Internet. These
proposals have gone nowhere, in spite of support from the United Nations.
But now the nations that want the restrictions are using a different
tactic by pushing to place the entire Internet under the control of an
international labor union, the International Telecommunications Union.
The proposal put forth in Dubai has not managed to garner very much
support, however, and the talks are in danger of falling apart over
opposition to the push by the Arab nations and Russia and China to
place censors on the Web.
ALERT! BRAND NEW!!
A brand new entry is now available in my regular series Musings
After Midnight, which is now posted at my blog, The Liberty Sphere. The
very latest is "Strategy Considerations in Moving Forward to Depose Tyranny and Restore the Constitution."

“It’s with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that
the U.S. must communicate that it’s not able to sign the agreement in the
current form,” said Terry Kramer, the U.S. ambassador to the UN body.
(www.ITU.int)

Canada,
U.S. snub UN telecoms treaty over government role in Internet Add to ...

A number of western countries including Canada snubbed a UN
telecommunications treaty Thursday after rivals, including Iran and China, won
support for provisions interpreted as endorsing greater government control of
the Internet.
The unraveling of the conference displayed the deep ideological divide at the
193-nation gathering in Dubai, where envoys grappled with the first revisions of
global telecom codes since 1988 — years before the dawn of the Internet
age.

Asia

video

A Western bloc led by a powerhouse U.S. delegation sought to stop any UN
rules on cyberspace, fearing they could squeeze Web commerce and open the door
for more restrictions and monitoring by authoritarian regimes that already
impose wide-ranging clampdowns. The head of one tech industry group said it
could “forever alter” the Web.
A rival group — including China, Russia, Gulf Arab states, African nations
and others — favoured UN backing for stronger government sway over Internet
affairs and claimed the Western dominance of the Internet needed to be
addressed.
The battles were over language that could influence perceptions of what the
Internet means as a modern tool for business, communications and societies — and
not directly about specific practical regulations.
The head of the U.S. delegation, Ambassador Terry Kramer, described it as a
“crossroads over the collective view of the Internet.”
Many of the disputed clauses were quashed or watered down during 10 days of
negotiations, but the non-Western bloc managed to win support for wording that
supported governments’ rights to have access to the Web.
This was viewed by the U.S. and its allies as a backdoor attempt to gain UN
sanction for more government controls over the Internet, adding to earlier
objections about references that could suggest UN backing for more state
authority over content and commerce.
In a packed meeting hall, Mr. Kramer said he could not sign the final accord,
noting a “heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities.”
A host of Western nations also said they could not back the new charter by
the UN’s International Telecommunications Union, or ITU, a group dating back to
the birth of the telegraph more than 140 years ago.
“Internet policy should not be determined by member states, but by citizens,
communities and broader society ... the private sector and civil society,” said
Mr. Kramer. “That has not happened here.”
Canada’s industry minister, Christian Paradis, said in a release that Canada
could not sign on to the UN treaty as it threatened an open, accessible
Internet.
“Our government will continue to support an open and accessible Internet that
facilitates economic development and prosperity,” Mr. Paradis said in a
release.
The ITU has no powers to instantly change how the Internet operates and its
regulations are non-binding. It also cannot compel reforms by states that
already widely censor cyberspace.
But the U.S.-led coalition at the talks argued that any UN codes sanctioning
greater government roles in the Internet — even under the framework of state
security — could be used as justification for even more controls from Web
watchers in places such China, Iran and other nations.
The host United Arab Emirates announced stricter Internet laws last month
that outlaw postings such as insulting rulers or calling for protests. The
Iranian delegate at the talks said it was time for a more “balanced approach”
between the Internet’s borderless reach and the needs of nations.
There is an outside chance that final text could be rewritten to appease the
U.S. and others before the meeting closes Friday. But ITU spokeswoman Sarah
Parkes said it “looks like a formality” that the document will stand.
“It’s not a crime to talk about Internet inside the ITU,” said the group’s
secretary-general, Hamadoun Toure, before Thursday’s decisive session.
Mr. Toure insisted the treaty did “not include provisions” on direct Internet
oversight by governments. But he noted the growing rifts over how to deal with
the Internet.
“There is no single world view, but several and these world views need to be
accommodated and engaged,” he said after the Western rejection.
The U.S. team in Dubai also includes heavy hitters from the tech world such
as Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., which stood up against proposals by European
telecoms companies to charge Internet content providers for access to domestic
markets around the world.
Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Washington-based industry group
The Internet Association, said the efforts for greater government controls could
“forever alter” the current framework of the Internet.
“The unique nature of the Internet - free from government control and
governed by multiple stakeholders - has unleashed unprecedented
entrepreneurialism, creativity, innovation, and freedom far beyond imagination,”
he said in a statement. “Preserving a free Internet for all people is essential
to the preservation of political and economic liberty.”
Other issues in the accord include calls for more transparency on roaming
charges by mobile phone companies, efforts to fight Internet fraud and spam and
creation of a worldwide emergency number for mobile phones and other
devices.

About Me

I can be found exploring dried up river beds. I carve stone found on those hikes. Yes, I collect rocks!The hiking here is perhaps the best I've come across. Like cooking, photography and visits to artistic and local events. We love to travel; places we have been to include London [UK], Mallorca, Acapulco, Playa Del Carmen, Athens, Mykonos, Santorini, Maui, LA, San Diego, Puerto Escondido, Edinburgh, Isle of Man, Isle Of Skye, Kirkwall/The Orkneys and Honolulu.